The present volume is based on the annual conference held by the so-called "Collaborative Research Centre" (Sonderforschungsbereich) Transformations of Antiquity at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2014. This conference dealt with the concept of allelopoiesis,, a reciprocal dependence between a receiving culture and a received culture (in this case: antiquity). Allelopoiesis is the concept of this edited volume as well. Each research group of the Sonderforschungsbereich invited an outside scholar to describe and test his or her own results; therefore, each essay is from a member or several members of the research group and is followed by an essay of the corresponding guest.

The ideal reviewer of this collection would be someone who is a specialist in Assyriology, Classical Philology, Film Studies, Political Sciences, History of Art, History of Science and History of Technology. Having been trained only in Classical Philology and History of Art I will simply give an overview of each of these rich and demanding studies.

After a short editorial introduction, the volume starts with Michael Weichenhahn discussing how the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom inspired the German "panbabylonists" in the beginning of the 20th century. Weichenhahn mainly focuses on the Assyriologists Hugo Winckler and Alfred Jeremias and states that there was a relationship (or: allelopoiesis) between the highly developed Babylonian culture with a similar decline on the one hand, and the great significance of Assyriology during the Wilhelminian period and its declining importance on the other hand. His correspondent Gerd Grasshof takes another point of view: that 20th century Assyriology was interested in Babylonia not because of Wilhelminian society but because of the general philhellenic movement and the fact that Greek astronomy was a relevant part of Babylonian knowledge.

The next contribution by the Berlin scholars Marcus Becker and Ulf Jensen is dedicated to the 1964 American epic movie "The Fall of the Roman Empire". Becker first describes how the camera perspective shows Rome and especially the Forum Romanum as the political center of power of the Western world, while Jensen focuses on the decadent cinematic interior symbolizing the East. Their "dialogue partner" Rachel Elsner emphasizes the same dichotomy between orient and occident in the work of the 19th-century French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme; in his historical paintings, all oriental motives seem to be dreamlike and timeless scenes, whereas the Roman world is presented in a more realistic, precise way.

The following two pairs of contributions deal with political issues. Marco Walter discusses the transformative effects of the metus hostilis, or Feindtheorem ("enemy-theorem"), and exemplifies this phenomenon through the Persian invasion of Greece when the antagonists Athens and Sparta became allies because of the fear of the external enemy and through the destruction of Carthage, which increased the political unity of the Roman empire. Veith Selk discusses this "enemy-theorem" particularly with regard to political thinkers like Augustine and Spinoza.

Eva Marlene Hausteiner's contribution is dedicated to the idea of "federation" and "confederation" with regard to the Greek city states and other federations such as the British Commonwealth. Her correspondent Thomas Hueglin expands this discussion using the examples of federal structures from the United States government to Bismarck's policy.

Alexander Klaudies' detailed contribution deals with the notitiae communes, the general terms in the philosophical work De veritate by the 17th-century scholar Herbert of Cherbury. Klaudies argues that Herbert refutes preceding philosophical schools like skepticism, rationalism and empiricism. (The contextualization and embedding of the relevant philosophical schools would have been helpful for readers not familiar with Herbert's philosophy in detail.) In her corresponding contribution Anne Eusterschulte emphasizes the criticism of religion in Herbert's work.

The contribution of Christoph Lehner and Helge Wendt deals with the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" and questions whether Isaac Newton's Principia can be attributed to the "modern" party. Joyce Van Leeuwen presents another "querelle" between "the new and the old" considering the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata Mechanica and their commentaries from the 16th and 17th century. The final two contributions have to do with translation and allelopoiesis from a philological perspective. Josefine Kitzbichler and Thomas Poiss both describe how contemporary tendencies in literature, theatre and the scholarly community itself can affect translations, here with the first German translations of Sophocles' King Oedipus from the 18th century and Schadewaldt's 20th century translations as examples.

It is clear that the present volume deals with varied and complex subjects of reception of antiquity. This is appealing but also problematic, since the concept of allelopoiesis sometimes appears artificial and unnecessarily complicated. Nevertheless, a reader interested in a particular field of reception will find some inspiring contributions in this well produced volume, which is suitably rounded off with two bibliographic indices and almost twenty pages of color photos in the appendix.

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) publishes timely reviews of current scholarly work in the field of classical studies (including archaeology). The authoritative archive can be found at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu.

This site was established to allow responses to reviews through the comments feature; all reviews from August 2008 have been posted.